Apple Co-Founder Steve Wozniak Calls Out Ashton Kutcher

Somewhere out there, there’s definitely a good movie about Steve Jobs that exists. And while it might be the untitled biopic written by Aaron Sorkin, it isn’t Joshua Michael Stern’s Jobs, which opened this weekend, at least if our own Mack’s review is to be believed. But if you don’t trust Mack, how about Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak? You know, the guy played by Josh Gad in the movie? As stated in his public review of the film on Gizmodo (in the comment section, no less), he wouldn’t recommend it. Has anyone been standing near Jobs’ grave to hear if he’s been rolling around in it?

Specifically, he said, “I thought the acting throughout was good. I was attentive and entertained but not greatly enough to recommend the movie. I suspect a lot of what was wrong with the film came from Ashton’s own image of Jobs.” It’s a compliment and an insult wrapped into one, telling someone they did a great job on getting their character wrong.

It has to be strange to go to a movie and watch your life, or someone’s interpretation of it, and there are a lot of people involved with this story that are very much still alive and probably don’t want to see their reputations get shat on. “I felt bad for many people I know well who were portrayed wrongly in their interactions with Jobs and the company,” Wozniak said.

Also mentioned were Kutcher’s recent disparaging remarks about Wozniak. “Ashton made some disingenuous and wrong statements about me recently (including my supposedly having said that the ‘movie’ was bad, which was probably Ashton believing pop press headlines) and that I didn’t like the movie because I’m paid to consult on the other one,” he wrote. “These are examples of Ashton still being in character. Either film would have paid me to consult, but the Jobs one already had a script written. I can’t take creative leadership from someone else. And I was turned off by the Jobs script. But I still hoped for a great movie.”

Damn! He put the word movie in quotes, people! I’m not even sure who that was a slam against, even. And then he takes a slight swing at Jobs, saying that Kutcher’s petty behavior was him still playing the part. I mean, maybe that’s not how he meant it, but it sounds like it.

He of course goes on, saying that the movie made Jobs out to be a genius far earlier in his career than he should have been given credit for. He also mentions at least one fact left out of the film: that whenever Apple as a company decided to bail on the friends who helped make it possible, Wozniak gave away chunks of his own stock, “because it was right.”

Something tells me Wozniak is just itching to record a commentary for the film’s DVD. Even though it looked like the film would be delayed indefinitely, here it is in theaters, for better or worse-niak.